December 2021 in Review

As I sit here on December 20, I’m a little in shock how quickly this month has gone. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind of a month, and there were lots of emotions.

(there are probably affiliate links somewhere)

Week 1

The funny thing is, I really have no clue what order these pictures are in. Or even what some of these pictures are…

Let’s see, that top picture is getting Angel Tree presents with my girls. They had a blast picking out a present for a 13-year-old girl who wanted jewelry, that and laughing at the odd selection of jewelry at the store. Did you know there are fidget spinner watches?

The Taco Bell Superman works at opened up their lobby to eating inside, so of course Batman decided that’s where we would eat lunch to torment his brother, I mean what else would you do.

I really don’t know just where Batman is in that picture on the right, you would think I would recognize the picture I included, but I have no clue just what that is.

And we decorated our Christmas tree, it really warms my heart, how much the kids still love decorating the Christmas tree, even the boys as teenagers. There was a lot of excitement and talk as they talked about various different ornaments and where they came from and “Why was I given this ornament?”

It made me a very happy Ticia.

Now, I didn’t add in all the pictures, but we also continued learning about various different countries and tried a few new meals.

December week 2

All right, so this was a very bitter sweet week.

We’ve been fostering Romeo for about 6 months now, and he’s been getting progressively more aggressive to the point he bit my Mom on Thanksgiving. I called the adoption agency and told them he needed to find a new foster home, and they sent someone out to evaluate him and she agreed with me. They picked him up two days later, and I spent the two days between when the final call was made and when he was picked up crying my eyes out because I hated giving up on him, but at the same time I couldn’t trust him around anyone visiting the house and given how often we have people over that just wasn’t viable.

I’ve been trying to hop around the different continents as we’ve discovered if you eat too many foods from one country type, they end up all mashing together. I’m back to continent hopping from time to time, but I somehow ended up with about 3-4 countries in a row that all ate a large amount of rice and somewhat sweet meat, so here we have a chicken meal with pineapple in it, this from Micronesia, a small island that’s part of Oceania area.

Most Sundays we stop by Rudy’s to get breakfast before heading off to church and serving in the parking ministry. Every now and then I have some kids who are more energetic than others, and this particular morning Batman was highly energetic and Superman just wanted to sleep more. He really has a hard time with working to midnight on Saturdays and then getting up the next day for church.

And finally, a mildly silly picture when one of the kids decided I needed to wear Jeff’s reading glasses in addition to my glasses. They find it quite amusing to do. I find it mildly annoying.

And I’m picking this collage for the featured picture because, even though it makes me cry, it’s important to remember all of the month, and this was one of those big moments.

Week 3

Apparently, all of my pictures I chose for this week are all from our trip up to Dallas.

So, not pictured events: Youth Group Christmas Party, Small Group Christmas party, Lorehaven Christmas party, Homeschool co-op Christmas party (and teacup exchange), teen hangout, celebrating the birthday of an Awkward Unicorn….

We headed up to Dallas for Christmas with my in-laws. I got a hilarious picture of Superman playing the no internet game on his laptop as we sat in a parking lot on the drive up.

The kids happily dog-piled on top of each other falling on top of me, and I thought it would be fun to get a picture of it. It’s actually one of my favorite pictures just because of how incredibly like my kids the picture I.

In a similar vein, is the picture of my boys falling over on Jeff as we played card games together with his parents. This particular moment we’re playing Quiddler.

And then that final picture on the bottom, Batman is eating a small snack as he is eagerly watched by two puppies happy to help him eat whatever he might be eating. They were very disappointed he didn’t share with them.

All right, now I’m up to date, and I’m going to head off to watch something with Jeff for a few minutes before going to bed tonight.

Week 4

Okay, I’m just combining a bunch of stuff together.

Technically most of this happened at the end of week 3, but it’s a sleepover. The sleepover started with the discovery of a flat tire. So, The Artist got to entertain the cousins as the boys helped replace the tire.

Then they spent the night decorating our Christmas presents. My kids have decided this is so much more fun to do WITH the cousins. So it had to wait until we could get everyone together. I got that great group shot of the kids, in the middle there, and it’s kind of amusing the different personalities I got in the shot.

The bottom left was our Awkward Unicorn Secret Santa exchange. Unfortunately one of the girls was sick, so we had to drop her presents off later. But everyone loved their presents and it was a big hit as we drank tea and had fun eating various tea-related snacks.

Our Christmas was a little bit different this year because the boys had to work when we usually start our celebrations on Christmas Eve Eve, which Jeff is now insisting on calling Christmas Adam. I read him a funny meme, saying since Adam came before Eve, we should call Christmas Eve Eve, Christmas Adam, and he’s been insisting ever since.

I kind of regret that now.

This year the kids all insisted they did not want matching Christmas pajamas but the onesie pajamas. The kids ended up all ordering chicken pajamas, which you can see on the group photo. They decided to wear theirs to our giant family Christmas. The Artist feels awkward wearing pajamas in public, so changed into normal clothes. Christmas was 80 something degrees, so a tank top more or less works.

We spent Christmas day watching movies together, and playing some of our new games. In particular we got a fun silly game called Sweet Existence, it looked rather silly and was surprisingly fun.

Other games we got: Gloomhaven, Clank expansions, Resident Evil board game, Scythe, and there were others, but those are the ones I’m remembering offhand.

Since we are in the middle of studying World War 2, we headed over to Fredricksburg to see the National World War 2 Pacific Theater museum, and the Pioneer Museum there. We also had fun looking at the town square exhibits of a “gingerbread” train set, and various different decorations inspired by their German heritage. There were lots of opportunities for posing for pictures, which made me very happy to take them.

I finished off the year fighting Cedar Fever that turned into a cold or flu or something. I just know I slept most of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day away/laid on the couch and pretended to watch our traditional movie marathon. This year we chose the theme “movies that were our childhood,” which becomes a little tricky given Jeff didn’t watch a lot of movies as a kid, and what he did watch he doesn’t like as much.

Our final list:

Superman would roll a die to determine which movie we would watch, and kept hoping his would come up, but his was last, much to his dismay.

And that’s a wrap for 2021!

The post December 2021 in Review appeared first on Adventures in a Messy Life.